II.
The second lamentation — a lamentation over the destruction of the holy city
2:1-22
A.
Jehovah the Lord's destruction of the holy city
vv. 1-10
Lam. 2
:1
2:1
How the Lord in His anger
Has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud!
He has cast from heaven to earth
The glory of Israel,
And has not remembered His
afootstool In the day of His anger.
Lam. 2
:2
2:2
The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob;
He has not spared;
He has torn down in His overflowing wrath
The strongholds of the daughter of Judah.
He has brought
them down to the ground;
He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.
Lam. 2
:3
2:3
He has cut off in fierce anger
All the horn of Israel.
He has withdrawn His right hand
From before the enemy.
He has burned among Jacob like a flame of fire;
It consumes all around.
Lam. 2
:4
2:4
He has bent His bow like an enemy;
He has set His right hand like an adversary
And has slain all that was pleasant to the eye.
In the tent of the daughter of Zion
He has poured out His wrath like fire.
Lam. 2
:5
2:5
The Lord has become like an
aenemy;
He has swallowed up Israel;
He has swallowed up all her palaces;
He has destroyed her strongholds
And multiplied in the daughter of Judah
Mourning and lamentation.
Lam. 2
:6
2:6
And He has violently taken away His
1pavilion like a garden;
He has destroyed the place of His assembly;
Jehovah has caused the appointed feast and the Sabbath
To be forgotten in Zion;
He has despised, in the indignation of His anger,
The king and the priest.
Lam. 2
:7
2:7
The Lord has cast off His altar;
He has abhorred His sanctuary;
He has delivered up into the hand of the enemy
The walls of her palaces.
They have made a noise in the house of Jehovah
As though it were the day of an appointed feast.
Lam. 2
:8
2:8
Jehovah has thought to destroy
The walls of the daughter of Zion;
He has stretched out the
aline And has not withdrawn His hand from destroying;
And He has made the rampart and the wall to mourn;
They languish together.
Lam. 2
:9
2:9
Her gates have sunk into the ground;
He has destroyed and broken her bars;
Her
aking and her princes are among nations
Where there is no law;
Her
bprophets also do not find
A vision from Jehovah.
Lam. 2
:10
2:10
The elders of the daughter of Zion
Sit on the ground; they are silent.
They have cast dust upon their head;
They have girded themselves with sackcloth.
The virgins of Jerusalem
Hang down their head to the ground.
B.
The prophet's lament
vv. 11-19
Lam. 2
:11
2:11
My eyes are consumed with
atears;
My bowels are in ferment;
My liver is poured out on the earth,
Because of the brokenness of the daughter of my people,
Because the little ones and the nursing children
Faint in the streets of the city.
Lam. 2
:12
2:12
They say to their mothers,
Where is the grain and the wine?
When they faint like one wounded
In the streets of the city,
When they pour out their soul
Into their mothers’ bosom.
Lam. 2
:13
2:13
What shall I testify to you? What shall I liken you to,
O daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I compare you to, that I may comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For your breach is great like a sea.
Who will heal you?
Lam. 2
:14
2:14
Your aprophets have seen for you
Vanity and folly,
And they have not uncovered your iniquity
To turn again your captivity;
But they have seen for you burdens
Of vanity and of
causes of banishment.
Lam. 2
:15
2:15
All those who pass on the way
Clap their hands at you;
They hiss and wag their head
At the daughter of Jerusalem,
saying,
Is this the city which they called,
aThe perfection of beauty,
The joy of the whole earth?
Lam. 2
:16
2:16
All your enemies
Have opened their mouth against you;
They hiss and gnash the teeth;
They say, We have swallowed
her up.
This is certainly the day that we have looked for;
We have found
it; we have seen
it.
Lam. 2
:17
2:17
Jehovah has done what He
apurposed;
He has fulfilled His word,
Which He commanded from the days of old;
He has torn down and has not spared,
And He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you;
He has exalted the horn of your adversaries.
Lam. 2
:18
2:18
Their heart cried out to the Lord:
O wall of the daughter of Zion,
Let
atears run down like a stream
Day and night;
Give yourself no respite;
Let not the pupil of your eye cease.
Lam. 2
:19
2:19
Arise, cry out in the night
At the beginning of the watches;
Pour out your heart like water
Before the face of the Lord;
aLift up your hands toward Him
For the life of your little ones,
Who faint because of famine
At the head of every street.
C.
Her prayer to Jehovah
vv. 20-22
Lam. 2
:20
2:20
See, O Jehovah, and look,
With whom You have dealt thus?
Shall the women eat their fruit,
The little ones nursed
by them?
Shall the priest and the prophet be slain
In the sanctuary of the Lord?
Lam. 2
:21
2:21
The youth and the old man
Lie on the ground in the streets;
My virgins and my young men
Have fallen by the sword;
You have slain them in the day of Your anger;
You have slaughtered; You have not spared.
Lam. 2
:22
2:22
You have called for, as though in the day of an appointed feast,
My terrors on every side,
And in the day of Jehovah’s anger
There was none who escaped or remained;
Those whom I have nursed and brought up
My enemy has consumed.
